Here's irony. I not only remember, but still possess, an artifact from the '80s: a special "letterhead book." These publications accommodated thousands of letterhead, envelope, and label designs. Designing a letterhead had become a work of art, honed by the imperative of clearly reflecting a company's brand image.

By 1998, most Western countries noticed electronic mail exceeded the "snail mail" output and input. Suddenly, e-mail replaced regular mail. This signaled the demise of good old, paper-based letterhead.

Why has virtually no attention been given the design of electronic letterhead? If I review the approximately 300 e-mails I receive on a daily basis from various companies all over the world, just five -- yes, you read that right: five -- e-mails are equipped with brand markers. By brand markers, I mean something beyond a signature line in Courier New font.

How many business e-mails do you send daily? 100? More? How many letters do you send every day? 10? Fewer? In all likelihood, you send 10 times as many e-mails as you do paper mail. Yet, I'll bet the first thing you did when your company opened its doors was to print... yes, letterhead! Right? Why wasn't the first thought designing e-letterhead? An e-mail template to reflect your company's spirit. You must have known you'd use e-mail in communications many times more frequently than any other medium.

We are overlooking e-mail as a branding tool. Many e-mails in my inbox, sent by people at some of the world's most respected brands, don't even display consistent signature lines. They change from message to message. Worse, often there's no signature line at all, just the sender's name (which, by the way, seems to become abbreviated to just a first name when the dialogue is friendly). Brand is 100 percent invisible. The person sending the e-mail is a more visible brand than the company at which they are employed.

Five features should characterize e-mail in the future:

A well-designed e-mail template. This should be something simple and memorable that reflects the brand's values without overpowering the e-mail message.

Consistent use of that template by everyone in the company.

Guidelines for template use, such as variations on the template for separate divisions, countries, products/services, and so forth.

Your brand is not merely your logo. It's every consumer touch point. That includes e-mail.

My letterhead book is collecting dust on a bookshelf. But it's waiting for a companion edition: an e-letterhead book. How long will the space beside that letterhead book remain empty? When will the corporate world care about the look and the message of its e-mail?

This is a big topic. Over the next two weeks, I'll focus on the art of constructing effective, branded e-letters. E-letterhead is just one essential. Effective communication of content in each e-mail is another.

Martin Lindstrom is recognized as one of the world's primary on- and offline branding gurus. He is the author of several best-selling branding books including the highly acclaimed BRANDchild with Patricia B. Seybold (Customer.com) and "Clicks, Bricks and Brands" with Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.